pechluck’s Neighborhood

First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!

The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.

TypePad Micro

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A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.

Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.

And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!

~ daisy

As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.

The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.

When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.

It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.

Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.

As always, thanks for your patience.

~daisy

I've started watching a show on A&E called hoarders. Its about people with serious problems with letting go of their stuff. Watching it is horrible and I do it for motivation. A couple of months ago I was fascinated by this art exhibit at the MoMA where a Song Dong a Beijing based artist took all of his mom's years of hoarded stuff and arranged it very nicely at the MoMA. Craziness.

Whenever I see either the A&E Hoarders show, I think about my grandfather. My grandfather had a serious problem, with buying more supplies than he could possibly use. On Saturdays, when I was growing up, I would go over to his house and sometimes clean it. Added to his problem was that he was also very paranoid so would think people were stealing his stuff. Once he claimed that his enemy stole his can opener, so I went through all his drawers and found 8! I'm not sure why anyone would need 8 can openers. He told me afterwords his enemy probably returned it to trick him. I would also go through his closets and organize everything. I once found more than 10 bottles of rubbing alcohol. I arranged them all on his shelf like a store. I thought, Grandpa you are going to die before you use all these bottles of rubbing alcohol.  My dad told me this hoarding habit comes from the time of the war when boats with supplies wouldn't show up, my grandparents on my otherside would hoard things too though they didn't have and didn't spend very much money so their hoarding was kept in check.

The people on Hoarders have severe problems. I'm just lazy, but this hoarders show moves me to act.
Every weekend this month, we haven't had too many obligations so we are visiting the Salvation Army and giving them stuff. A friend of mine just had a boy baby and asked to borrow G's clothes. I gladly gave him a couple of bags. Today as we were going through the closet to haul somethings to the dump, I found a couple more bags of G clothes so I will give that to him too. I think we have several months to go to be at the state where I would like to be at -- where everything we own is currently being used or will be used.

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy

I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.

I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.

Cheers,

daisy

Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.

We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you for being so patient.

~daisy

Blog Action Day

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Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.

This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!

Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.

Can't wait to read your posts!

~ daisy

G has been playing with our phones and pretending to talk to people for maybe about a month. but today as F's brother came over, G started taking pretend things out of a bag and giving them to F's brother who would thank him. It was quite funny. Until now G would hand people shoes and expect them to thank him, I guess he is seeing what he can get away with giving them.

Ideally I would be a responsible mommy and make sure everything is taken care of before the baby was born, but seriously it didnt even cross my mind. So now I am meeting with a financial planner and an estate lawyer to make everything clean. Right now I am just gathering up documentation and figuring out who we would like to be G's guardians. She had us pick 3. It was pretty hard to do. We had asked our first one already, and the second was natural, but picking the third was a little difficult.

What is sort of interesting was our lawyer's exploding turkey question. The question was this: You are having Thanksgiving dinner and the turkey explodes killing most of your close family. Who do you give the money to? Really distant family or some charity? Both of us have such a large extended family and we know most of them that we went with the distant family option.

We haven't made too much progress with the financial planner yet. Mostly because of our or my crazy schedule. It will be pretty interesting to see what she comes up with.

The Amazon Conduit will be working again on October 15, 2009. Thank you to everyone for your patience.

Have a great weekend,

daisy, Team Vox